As my colleague Anthony Shadid reports, protest organizers in Syria have “vowed to turn out their largest numbers yet on what protesters have begun to call ‘Great Friday.’ Some residents said security forces were already deploying in hopes of damping the turnout, and organizers across Syria called the day potentially decisive for the uprising’s momentum.”

He adds: “thousands turned out for a protest in Dara’a, a city in southwestern Syria near the Jordanian border where the uprising was galvanized last month.”

According to activists, this video shows a student protest in Dara’a on Wednesday:

According to Syrian activists, this video of marchers bearing candles, took place on Wednesday evening in Darya, a Damascus suburb:

The Lede will continue to follow the war in Libya and the protests in Syria and across the region on Thursday. In the meantime, please visit the home page of NYTimes.com for breaking news and to read reports from my colleagues in the region.

Many people following the siege of Misurata, which has now lasted two months, probably have little idea of what it looked like before the shelling began.

Below are two YouTube clips that illustrate how it has changed: the first shows fighters in the city this week; the second – which was posted last week on the Arabist, a Cairene blog, – was filmed last August:

Since autocratic rulers in the Arab world began using violence to try to crush the uprisings against their rule late last year, activists and citizen journalists have posted graphic images of hundreds of dead or badly wounded civilians on Web sites like Facebook and YouTube.

In many cases, activists do so to make sure that there is some record of those deaths in countries where the professional media is partly or entirely controlled by the governments whose security forces have done the killing. In others, such as in Libya, government opponents are compiling what they see as important evidence of crimes against humanity, and some of those images have already been reviewed by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who has warned Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his commanders that they could end up in court after the war.

Links to such images have then been passed around on social networks like Twitter, not just by activists or other people with a stake in the outcome of the uprisings, but also by journalists, who have been forced to rely on such digital evidence of events in several countries where governments have made it difficult or impossible for independent reporters to work.

As a result, many people following the war in Libya or the protests in Yemen or Syria or Bahrain in recent months have become quite used to viewing remarkably graphic and disturbing images of the dead and the wounded. One of those people is Andy Carvin, a social media reporter for National Public Radio, who uses his Twitter feed to sift through the evidence of protests and combat found online and alert his followers to new information posted on the Web each day.

On Wednesday, Mr. Carvin, like other reporters following Libyan opposition Web sites, came across bloody video posted on Facebook shot the same day in a medical center in the besieged Libyan city of Misurata. As Mr. Carvin explains in a blog post written a short time ago, the video showed what appeared to be the body of a British photographer who was killed in Misurata on Wednesday, Tim Hetherington, and graphic images of two other photographers, Chris Hondros and Guy Martin, who were seriously wounded in the attack that killed Mr. Hetherington.

In Mr. Carvin’s post, which includes a link to the footage, he explained why, after grappling with the ethical issues involved, he ultimately decided to let his readers know about the video and decide for themselves if they want to view it. He wrote:

I have posted hundreds of videos of war casualties since all of this started in Tunisia, many of them much more graphic and horrifying than this one. I’ve said countless times that people have a choice whether to view such content. They have a choice whether to follow me on Twitter, and they have a secondary choice as to whether they should view the actual content. In many cases I tell people they *shouldn’t* watch it because it is so horrific. But I post it nonetheless because I believe it is important to document what happens during wartime and to give people the choice to bear witness.

War does not discriminate: it can claim the young, the old; men and women; soldiers and civilians. And in this case, journalists. Some people have suggested to me that I shouldn’t share the link to the video because they were journalists, and that we know people who knew them in person. I too know a number of people who were very close to these men. But all the other people that have been documented as casualties during these attacks, they all had people who knew them and loved them. Yet we shared footage of them nonetheless, again because of that desire to bear witness.

Lastly, I have to consider who they are and what they do for a living. They’re professional war photographers. It’s their job to document the horrors of war, including the dead and injured. As fate would have it, they are now among the casualties. Would they want footage of them to be shared? I’ll never be able to ask Tim, but I hope that Chris and Guy will one day be able to comment on this, whether they support my decision to share the video or to condemn it.

Ultimately it boils down to this: I feel like I would be an absolute hypocrite if I didn’t share this video. So here it is. I don’t know if it will even be online much longer. Either way, it is your choice to view it or not.

OperationLibya, via Twitter Khalid Ahmed Alghirani, a Libyan blogger who was killed on Tuesday, in an undated photograph with his son.

While much of the international community’s attention has been focused recently on the dire situation for opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in the besieged city of Misurata, his forces continue to attack protesters turned rebels in another city in western Libya, Zintan.

While some journalists and aid workers have been able to reach Misurata by boat to document the frequently deadly attacks there, Zintan, in the western Nafusa Mountains, has been largely cut off, forcing residents of the city to find ways to report on their own struggle.

One of those ways has been through a group Twitter account, OperationLibya, maintained by a group of Zintan’s revolutionaries. On Tuesday, the group’s only English-speaking member, Khalid Ahmed Alghirani, who wrote as Kalid Zalitin, reported that he had been seriously wounded:

These are and could be my last tweet. I am using sat net from Zintan hospital. Was injured in battle today. We have very few medicine.

We will not give up nor give in, its not about life anymore, its about human dignity and rights. All our followers.

All tweets will b in Arabic if I can’t make it. As am only English speaker here ATM. #freedom4libya #freedom4zintan #freedom4all

Several hours later, one of the blogger’s colleagues announced that he had died.

On Tuesday, 19 April, the Zintan fighters encountered a fierce battle with Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s troops and Khalid received a wound to the chest. What could have been a simple procedure in a medical center outfitted with modern supplies and equipment, became a critical situation when surgeons in the unit did not even have basic supplies such as packing gauze, sutures and proper lighting to conduct surgery. It was reported that surgeons were using the lights of mobile phones to examine Khalid’s wound, and he was listed on Tuesday afternoon in critical condition.

Throughout Khalid’s painful ordeal, he continued to Tweet, knowing that as he was the only English-speaking member of the group, the information he provided would be able to reach a much larger audience. Particularly since the group was attempting to reach out to NATO who had recently bombed the area – wounding many, and killing an unknown number of civilians on the ground. Beyond basic war zone triage equipment, the hospital in Zintan also lacked medication to help ease Khalid’s pain. Despite his wounds and knowing that without emergency surgery his chances of survival decreased each hour, Khalid continued to tweet from his account.

Finally, as the pain became more than he could bear, and his lungs began to fill with blood, Khalid handed over his Twitter account to his cousin, Abdul Basit, and alerted his followers that future tweets would be in Arabic. Abdul tweeted next: “Inshallah, Khalid will be fine. I will try to hang on as much as I can…”

In the evening of Tuesday, 19 April, Khalid dictated a tweet to his followers: “This could be my final tweet. I am using satellite net from Zintan Hospital. Was injured in battle and there is very little medicine.”

In the end, Khalid Alghirani succumbed to his injuries and died on Wednesday, 20 April, of a collapsed lung at Zintan Hospital. He leaves behind a wife and a son.

As my colleague C.J. Chivers reports, Tim Hetherington, a photojournalist and filmmaker, was killed in the besieged Libyan city of Misurata on Wednesday. Two other photographers working near him, Chris Hondros and Guy Martin, were also seriously wounded.

Mr. Hetherington, a British-born New Yorker who was 40 years old, was a contributor to Vanity Fair magazine known for his work in Afghanistan.

In a report on his death on the magazine’s Web site, David Friend wrote; “In 2007, he won the coveted World Press Photo of the Year Award for his coverage of American soldiers in the Korengal Valley—one of three World Press prizes he received.” Mr. Hetherington’s photographs of American soldiers in Afghanistan led to his 2010 film, “Restrepo.”

Tim Hetherington, who died in Misurata, Libya, today, was not only a very brave and good man, but an endearingly sensitive and honest person. Hetherington’s life, his hopes, doubts, and aspirations, were all an open book; he shared them with an enthusiasm and a generosity that made him special. Tim and I had worked on assignment for The New Yorker together in Liberia, in 2006, a country he and I had both lived in at different times and shared a special affection for, and then again in 2009, in Guinea. He was just beginning to earn real acclaim professionally and was excitedly discussing new creative ideas with friends and colleagues. After publishing two very original books—one about American soldiers in Afghanistan and the other about people he had come to know in Liberia—and directing the award-winning film “Restrepo,” Tim was looking to dig deeper into the theme of what happens to men who are at war.

New video, posted on YouTube by Syrian activists on Wednesday, appears to show the very start of the crackdown on protesters in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The security forces moved in at about 2 a.m. on Tuesday, after protesters had occupied a central square in Homs, following a long day of funerals and mass protests.

This video, uploaded to YouTube a short time ago by an activist who writes as Shantal7afana on Twitter, appears to have been filmed just as the first shots were fired:

In a description of this video on YouTube, the activist who uploaded it claims that the shots were fired from the police headquarters near the square, and says that this casts doubt on the government line that armed Islamic extremists have been behind all the attacks on protesters in recent weeks.

The same activist also uploaded this graphic video, which seems to show the body of a protester killed by the security forces in the attack being carried away from the square:

On the soundtrack of this video there are prayers for the dead man – “May God have mercy on your soul,” and “Say there is no God but God” – and curses for both the security forces – “You animals, criminals!” – and Syria’s president: “Bashar, you traitor!”

More new video of protesters fleeing gunshots in the square on Tuesday morning was uploaded to the 501bibo YouTube channel on Wednesday.

A burst of gunfire can be heard at the start of this clip, which also shows a bullet retrieved by a protester and the abandoned square around the new clocktower in central Homs:

This clip also shows protesters scattering as shots are fired:

More dramatic video of the protests in Homs on Monday, and the funerals for protesters killed one day earlier that sparked them, was added to the 501bibo channel yesterday.

The two clips below appear to have been filmed during the funerals in Homs on Monday.

This video seems to have been filmed as the coffins of dead protesters were being carried out of the Grand Mosque of al-Nuri in the market district of Homs on Monday:

The same event was apparently captured in this video, which was uploaded to another YouTube channel on Wednesday, and shows the coffins emerging from the mosque and being greeted by thousands of protesters on the street outside:

These clips, from the 501bibo channel, show thousands of angry mourners calling for the downfall of the Syrian government during Monday’s funerals:

This video, added to the 501bibo channel on Wednesday – of a masked man hitting a photograph of President Bashar al-Assad with a shoe, a grave insult – is said to have been shot on Brazil Street, in Homs:

More video of student protesters in Aleppo being confronted on Wednesday by “thugs,” who support Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, has been uploaded to the Ugarit News YouTube channel.

Both clips look like they were filmed during the clash described in our previous update, which took place inside the university’s medical faculty on Wednesday, even though the wrong date appears to have been added to the first one on YouTube.

The Ugarit News YouTube channel also includes this video, said to show Assad supporters confronting medical students in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Tuesday (an incident described on The Lede yesterday).

Just as the presidents of Egypt and Yemen have in previous months, Syria’s president has apparently mobilized government supporters who do not wear uniforms to attack protesters. As Borzou Daragahi of The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, when thousands of protesters occupied a central square in Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, “truckloads of plainclothes pro-government militiamen called shabiha arrived,” to confront them.

One Syrian activist, who writes as Edward Dark on Twitter, pointed last night to this photograph posted on the Facebook wall of a man he describes as one of the shabiha, “complete with Bashar Head Tattoo on left bicep!”

The same Facebook wall, which is largely devoted to photographs of the page’s owner flexing his muscles and images of Syria’s president, describes Syria as, “a paradise on Earth.”

This video is said to show an injured medical student being rushed to the hospital:

One activist in Aleppo, who writes as AnonymousSyria on Twitter, posted an account of the protest based on interviews with students who took part and a doctor who treated a wounded student at the university hospital.

In a series of updates that began about an hour ago, the activist wrote:

I’ll write what I gathered about Aleppo university protest today, all info were gathered from witnesses, I saw nothing myself. The protest started at the central university library, with tens of protesters chanting for freedom & peace. Then the protest surrounded by pro-regime thugs & students, they chanted for #Assad & beat protesters, someone saw an arrest….

About twenty students, medical students among them, escaped to the Faculty of Medicine & sheltered there. At this point, the reading library in the Faculty of Medicine were watching from small openings before the windows there. At this time, reading library turned into chaos, as students started shouting to support their friends in the lower floor.

Some students went from the reading library to the lower floor & all shouted against securities “برا برا” means “Out Out.” Securities gathered with Batath thugs & broke into the faculty & started a brutal beating against students.

The brutality was indescribable, I saw myself some blood on someone’s t-shirt when arrived….

Been told about 10-15 arrests, I couldn’t confirm, but I confirm that security arrested one of their thugs by mistake….

A doctor at the #Aleppo University Hospital confirmed the arrival of one injured protester to the emergency department….

About the medical reading library, securities went there, closed the door & started lecturing & insulting students there. They didn’t want to allow students out until they check their student IDs & make sure they are all medical students….

In the library, a student broke something (watch?) to express his discontent, securities were provoked & started beating him. Then students allowed out, some mobile phones were confiscated. Classes canceled for the rest of the day.

Another Aleppo blogger familiar with the university’s medical school, who writes as Seleucid on Twitter, confirms that this video, said to show supporters of the regime in plain clothes beating students, was filmed inside the school:

After watching the video, Seleucid commented: “I wish I had it in me to stomach state TV, I want to know how they’re explaining this.”

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The Lede is a blog that remixes national and international news stories -- adding information gleaned from the Web or gathered through original reporting -- to supplement articles in The New York Times and draw readers in to the global conversation about the news taking place online.

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Six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television Tuesday for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube.Read more…